An attempt to supplant the pack-horses between London and Shrewsbury was made in 1737, by the establishment of the “Gee-ho.” Facts relating to this conveyance are of especial interest, because we are told the circumstances that led to it being put on the road. It seems, then, that until that year Shrewsbury had known no other than a pack-horse service, which set out from and came to what was then the “Pheasant,” now the “Lion and Pheasant,” Inn on Wyle Cop, in that town. A Mrs. Warner, a widow, was landlady, and apparently pack-horse proprietor as well. A shrewd fellow named Carter, a soldier who had been billeted at the inn, made love to the widow, married her, and managed the business. Let us hope they were both happy and successful. At any rate, Carter started the “Gee-ho” as the first conveyance to ply between Shrewsbury and London. It was a stage-waggon, drawn by eight horses, with two others in reserve to pull it out of those sloughs that might then be confidently expected on the way. It was advertised to go to or from London in seven, eight, or nine days in either direction, according to the condition of the roads. Smollett’s description of how Roderick Random and Strap easily overtook the waggon journeying to London along the Great North Road naturally leads to an inquiry why, if being ill-provided with money and only lightly burdened with luggage, they, in common with others, preferred to pay for the doubtful privilege of going slower than they could easily walk. The reason, perhaps, lay partly in that lack of appreciation of scenery which characterised the period. Poets had not yet seen fit to rhapsodise upon the beauties of nature, and artists had not begun to paint them. Both were in thrills of the most exquisite rapture on the subject of shepherds and shepherdesses, but their Arcady was bounded by bricks and mortar. Strephon and Chloe wore silk and satin, red-heeled shoes and wigs, and patched and powdered amazingly. Theirs was a bandbox Arcady, a pretty bit of make-believe of the kind pictured by Watteau; and though they found much poetry in lambs, they knew nothing of the wintry horrors experienced by the genuine shepherds in the lambing season, and, indeed, nothing of nature outside the well-ordered parks and formal gardens of the great. All classes alike looked with horror upon natural scenery, regarded the peasantry as barbarians, and left the towns with reluctance and dismay.